Music Banter

I was going to post something about the shitty state of the music industry, how not even Lady Gaga makes money out of Spotify and the way that the whole damn edifice is crumbling around our ears, but you know what, I’m not going to write about business. Not today. I’m going to write about genius. Sheer, wonderful, genius. And excitement. That kind of wonderful exuberance that music can plant in your soul and make the day worth struggling on through.

What does genius look like?

Tonight, Matthew, genius looks like this;

Thom Yorke cares not for my long rambling piece about the music industry

See, I was browsing idly on my laptop this morning, trying not to think about the fact that I had to be at my real job soon, when I stumbled across something fantastic.

Thom Yorke has a band. They’re called Radiohead. You might have heard of them. These days, however, he has another one. They’re called Atoms for Peace, and they include Yorke, Nigel Godrich (long-time Radiohead engineer and then producer), Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (Seriously, I really don’t understand how that musical relationship works!), and Joey Waronker, who is the guy who replaced Bill Berry in REM after his departure. Not a bad line-up, that.

Anyway, they’ve been playing shows. And at one of those shows, they did this:

It’s fantastic, utterly fantastic. Sat in bed I felt something I haven’t for a long time. No, not the touch of a women, a sense of real excitement. The hair actually standing up on the back of my neck, my arms and everywhere else. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

Thom Yorke, thank you for reminding me of how great music can be.

There are a lot of good bands and solo artists around in this world. You know who I mean. Talented and hard-working musicians who write songs that people quite like, and who forge careers being- alright. Not bad. And it’s not their fault.

They don’t set the world on fire, their tracks are enjoyed, but are no-one’s favourite. I’m not talking about Pop Idol and its ilk here, they’re an altogether different kind of beast, a sort of devilish imitation of music which amounts to nothing more than a vulgar advert for itself. No, I mean the middling bands. The triers, who stick around but never seem to get better or worse. They all care. They all devote their lives to their music. What it is it that dooms these people (and us, by proxy) to lives of musical mediocrity, plodding along whilst others soar. I’m talking about the way Bjork manages to be a marvelous, unpredictable firework, and Dido, who seems like a nice girl into the musical equivalent of flock wallpaper. The way Coldplay calmly and carefully fashion a music which will fill the stadiums of the world but will never truly touch someone’s heart in the way that Elbow’s ‘Asleep in the Back’ does from the opening bar.

There are others. I’m sure you can think of them. It’s a good parlour game, actually. Find a genius, and a corresponding mediocrity. You could call it ‘Mozart and Salieri,’ if you wanted to get all classical.

So what makes a genius? 

Sheer dumb luck. unique influences. A spark. Genetic luck. Ah, damned if I know. 

All I know for sure is that when that spark, that greatness, that genius exists in someone, it is their duty to keep it alive at all costs, to let it grow, to let what is inside them come out, whether the world ever notices or not.

Mediocrity will always spring up. It is plentiful. For every Bobby Gillespie, every Karen O, there’s a dozen Paulo Nutinis or Joss Stones. For every potential Nick Drake, there are a thousand people who could be the next Chris DeBurgh. Now there’s an image to terrify you. 

If you have that spark in you, don’t you dare let it go out. You’ll know if it’s in you. It’ll eat at you, itching and twisting, trying to get out. And you can’t ignore it. You have to let it grow. You have to save music.

There’s too much mediocrity out there. Go out there, out into the big bad world and fight, fight for all your worth, to make that spark spring it into a fire. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to us. 

Without musical genius, all we’ll have is a sea of mediocrity, competence and beige conformity to a sea of pointless musical sludge. Without genius, the future is Chris Martin’s Vegan-friendly environmentally-sourced hemp-laced boot, stepping on the human face forever.